


Neither Here Nor There

by vongroovy (tralalalally)



Category: My Boss My Hero (TV)
Genre: All-Knowing Younger Brother, Established Relationship, M/M, Making Things Too Complicated, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tralalalally/pseuds/vongroovy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sakurakoji Jun tries to be two things at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neither Here Nor There

**Author's Note:**

> Written for peroxidepest17 for Yuletide 2007. I failed to write the Nobuta wo Produce fic we'd been matched for and instead ended up familiarizing myself with the fandoms in her other requests and writing for one of them instead as I just fell too madly in love with it.

Everything is great until the day when Kazu, quite unexpectedly, catches Jun with his hand down Makio's pants.

"Aniki, I thought you'd like some pudding," Kazu says, appearing in the room even though Makio promised that he'd made sure no one would interrupt them. And then the pudding crashes to the floor, the glass bowl shattering loudly in the silence his entrance has inspired. "A-a-aniki?"

"Pudding," Makio says, lurching instinctively towards the dessert that wobbles sadly on the floor. As Jun hasn't quite managed to extricate his hand, he is forced to lurch along after him.

"Makki, wait. It's already ruined anyway, ne?"

"You're supposed to be studying," says Kazu. He seems stuck to the spot, although his eyes are darting around the room, apparently determined to look at everything except his boss or Jun.

"Ahh, we were, we were," Makio says, finally pausing enough that Jun can free himself. "We were taking a break. It's not what it looked like!"

At that, Kazu seems able to break out of his frozen state. "You bastard!" he yells, taking a swing in Jun's general direction, although he still won't look him in the face. "What were you doing to him?

"If you touch him, I'm gonna fucking kill you," shouts Makio, pulling his attention away from the lost pudding and jumping in front of Jun. "It's okay. We were just..." He waves his hands around in a vague sort of way that conveys nothing. His cheeks are very red which Jun might find adorable if he wasn't able to feel the heat in his own face.

"It was exactly what it looked like," he says, very quietly.

"What was that?" Kazu says, his voice still loud and angry.

And then there is the clatter of footsteps in the hall, and Kuroi and a few underlings and Mikio join them in the room. And Makio's pants are unzipped, and Kazu is going to tell everyone, and Mikio is smiling like he has already guessed what is going on, and Jun has never been more embarrassed in his life.

"Ne, nii-san, could you be less-" the tiniest pause "-energetic about your studying?"

Makio assures him that everyone will forget about it, but Jun thinks this is just wishful thinking. He knows that's what it is two days later when he comes over after he is done with classes to study (really study this time because Makio has exams coming up and Jun promised the week before that he would help him; he is hesitant to return to the house so soon, but a promise is a promise). Usually any underlings around skittered out of his way and pretended not to exist when he came over, but they stay put now, some of them whispering as he walks down the hall and a couple of them acknowledging him with a bow as he passes.

It is very strange, and he mentions it to Mikio when he meets him coming out of a room.

"Sakurakoji-kun, you're nii-san's girlfriend now. They have to treat you differently." He smiles. "You're almost part of the family now, ne?"

Two more underlings pass by, both of them bowing to him.

When he reaches Makio's room, he pauses in the door. "So I'm your girlfriend now?" he says.

"Eh?" says Makio, who has his nose in a book and doesn't appear to have heard his approach. "No one thinks you're a girl." He looks him over, book dropping down into his lap. "Probably," he adds.

"You said they would forget all about it," Jun says, and he can tell that he is whining a little. But it was so nice before, when the fact that they were together was a secret just for them. It made it easier to be Jun and Makki instead of a university student and a yakuza.

Makio shrugs. "It's okay," he says. "They all like you." Which isn't really the point, but Jun lets it go.

It also isn't true, he reflects when he leaves later that night and meets Kazu coming in as he goes out.

"You better watch yourself," Kazu says, which might be more intimidating if he was able to bring himself to look Jun in the face.

"Good night to you too, Kazu-kun," Jun says, sounding much more cheerful than he feels.

Things only go downhill from there. He spots some of Makio's underlings following him around at school. They don't come near him, but they are so noticeable; none of them has even made an effort to look like anything but what they are, and sooner or later they are going to attract attention. He only hopes they won't reveal their connection to him. It is hard enough to be a normal university student when you know in your head that your boyfriend is yakuza; he can't imagine everyone else knowing.

"I told them to," Makio says when Jun asks if he knows that his underlings are stalking him. "You're an important person now. People might try to use you to get to me. I don't want there to be trouble." Which is a nice sentiment, but Jun is still a little upset about it because he doesn't want bodyguards. It's too strange.

Then Makio suggests that he get a tattoo. "Absolutely not," Jun says, thinking about how a couple of his school friends have suggested going to an onsen on their next break. And he knows about the signs posted at most hot springs and public baths. No tattoos allowed.

No yakuza allowed.

"It doesn't have to be very big," Makio says.

"No," says Jun.

Makio is upset about it and Jun tries to explain, but there were still things Makio doesn't understand about being normal, about not growing up to be a boss. Jun likes Makio - loves Makio - but he likes his friends at school too and likes being in university and likes having the freedom to go to an onsen without worrying over whether they will let him in.

"But maybe you don't understand him either, Sakurakoji-kun," Mikio suggests. He was outside when Jun got out of his last class for the day and invited him to a nearby tea shop. "Nii-san thinks that you don't respect his lifestyle."

Which Jun knows isn't anything Makio has ever said, regardless of how much Mikio makes it sound like he is passing on something his brother told him. Still, just because he would never say it doesn't mean that he can't feel it. "I don't mind it," Jun says, which is mostly true; yakuza in general are still a bit worrying even if he doesn't mind Makio specifically. "But that doesn't mean I want to get the tattoos and take any ceremonial oaths binding me to the brotherhood forever or anything like that."

"Oh, he did mention that already?" Mikio asks, sipping his tea.

"It was just an example," says Jun. "You mean he wants me to take an oath?"

"Oh, no, nii-san doesn't," Mikio says, and Jun is relieved for exactly one second. "Our father does." He smiles, and Jun thinks he might be joking, but it is hard to tell. "Ne, Sakurakoji-kun, are those friends of yours?" He inclines his head towards the doorway, where Jun is horrified to see Takashima and Sato, two of his classmates, who have just walked in and are attempting to get his attention. He gives the smallest wave possible and tries to will them to keep away, but it doesn't work.

Jun tries to leave out as many of the details as he can when he introduces Mikio, but Takashima insists on asking how they know each other.

"Sakurakoji-kun is going out with my sister," Mikio says.

"You have a girlfriend?" Sato asks. "Why didn't we know you have a girlfriend? Do we know her?"

"She's in high school," says Mikio, and he is smiling like he's never enjoyed anything so much.

After that, Sato and Takashima want to know all about his girlfriend; Jun hates lying, but he can't very well tell them the truth, so he answers as vaguely as he can. It makes him feel terrible, and he calls Makio after he leaves the shop and tells him that he isn't feeling well and is not going to come over like he had planned. It isn't really a lie - his stomach is all in knots - but he doesn't really explain why and when he hears the disappointment in Makio's voice, he feels even worse.

He has the feeling that he is a really horrible boyfriend.

"What's wrong with you?" Kazu asks him the next day when, guilt-ridden, he shows up at the house with an offering of pudding.

"Huh?"

"Aniki's all depressed because you've been acting so weird lately," Kazu says. "So what's wrong with you? Because he likes you, and if you hurt him, I'm gonna to kill you." Which is, he thinks, the most acceptance he can expect from Kazu.

"Makki's so lucky to have a friend like you," Jun tells him.

"Eh?" Kazu says.

"Nothing, nothing," says Jun. "It's just nice that you look out for him."

"Are you breaking up with him?" he asks; he is still wearing an angry face, but his voice is a little hopeful.

"None of your business," says Jun, and the snappishness of it surprises both of them. "Sorry, sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to...sorry."

Kazu leaves him, looking a little dazed and a little suspicious, and Jun heads for Makio's room, annoyed at himself for being in such a bad mood.

"I brought you pudding," he says on entering Makio's room; Makio is sprawled out on the floor, still in his school uniform, and he looks up at those words and smiles his brightest smile.

"Sakuranantoka! I didn't think you were coming today," he says. He gets up and takes the offered pudding and sets it on his desk. "I'm so happy," he says, and he isn't looking at the treat at all, just at Jun, like Jun is the most important thing in the world, more important than pudding or graduating high school.

"Makki, do you think I don't respect your lifestyle?" he asks.

"Eh?" says Makio.

When he is in a lecture the next day he starts to make a list of the pros and cons of going out with a yakuza boss; it's probably something he should have thought about before he started going out with Makio, but there hadn't really been a lot of thought involved in that decision. He has one item in the pro list ("Makki") and two in the con ("people might kidnap me" and "will forever be connected to a world of violent crime") when the door of the classroom opens and Mikio steps in. The professor, who appears to know him, pauses in the middle of his lecture and has a short, whispered conversation with him. And then Mikio makes his way to Jun's seat, and the look on his face is serious and terrifying, and he whispers, "Nii-san's been shot. You're to come home with me." He helps Jun put his books away, and talks to him all the way out to the waiting limousine and then all the way to the house. Jun hears none of it.

"I don't know how he's doing," Mikio says. "I haven't seen him myself yet." And Jun prepares himself for the worst, but when Mikio pushes him into the room, Makio is sitting on his bed, cross-legged, playing cards with Kazu. There is a small, white bandage on his left temple, but apart from that he looks fine. Fine and alive and not on his deathbed as Jun has been imagining. He's relieved and a little mad at being made to worry over nothing; he starts to laugh because he thinks he might start crying instead if he doesn't.

He thinks he knows something important.

"I thought you were supposed to be hurt," he says, and he sits on the edge of the bed. "You don't look very hurt."

"It looked worse when it happened," says Makio. "It was just a scrape really though. Nothing to worry about."

Jun reaches over and squeezes his hand; he wants to say that he was worried, that he's always going to worry because he loves Makio and doesn't want anything else to go wrong. But Mikio and Kazu are still in the room, and he doesn't want to say it in front of them, so he just squeezes Makio's hand, hard, and laughs a little more and tells him he's being a baby for staying in bed over just a scrape.

He thinks Makio understands.

He understands too, now, that he has been trying to hard. It doesn't matter if he doesn't quite fit in with Makio's world, and it doesn't matter if being with Makio makes it harder to fit into his own world. He has the rest of his life to figure things out; for now he can just be himself, with Makio.

Makki is Makki no matter where he is, and Jun can be that way too. He doesn't have to be different people here and there, doesn't have to worry about fitting in. Jun is Jun, and the world can fit itself around him.

"What do you look so happy about?" Makio asks when they are finally left alone.

"You're all right," says Jun. "And I'm here."

"That is nice," Makio says.

"And we're alone," Jun continues. "And this door has a lock on it."

"Very nice," says Makio.

And it is.


End file.
